


Breaking The Girl.

by wily_one24



Category: Veronica Mars (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-04-21
Updated: 2008-04-21
Packaged: 2017-11-05 11:50:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 17,144
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/406069
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wily_one24/pseuds/wily_one24
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Logan breaks the girl.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Breaking The Girl.

**Author's Note:**

> **Rating:** R. Some language (some? Lots!), meanness and spite. Disturbing themes.  
>  **Characters:** Mainly Veronica and Logan, but it's  not a 'shipper fic, trust me. Some Logan/Lilly.  
>  **Disclaimer:** VM and all related accessories are not mine. Damnit.  
>  **Timeline:** Set pre-series. Nothing in this fic contradicts canon, it fits seamlessly into canon, so take from that what you will.  
> 
> 
>  **A/N:** Written for my lovely, very generous, gorgeous Sweet Charity winning bidder, [](http://meimei42.livejournal.com/profile)[**meimei42**](http://meimei42.livejournal.com/). I hope this is something near what you wanted.
> 
>  **A/N2:** Title and lyrics taken blatantly from two songs, "Breaking The Girl" by the Red Hot Chilli Peppers and "Come As You Are" by Nirvana,

**  
BREAKING THE GIRL   
**

  
_Rarely do friends  
Come and then go  
She was a girl  
Soft but estranged  
We were the two  
Our lives rearranged_   


“You’re late.”

As a general rule, Logan Echolls did not pout. Usually. Sometimes he did. In certain instances, such as when his girlfriend had made him wait for over an hour, sitting alone by a cement pool when he could have been surfing with his friends. For example.

“Oh, get your panties out of their bunch.” Lilly rolled her eyes as she threw a shoulder bag onto a lounge and dropped down onto another one. “It’s been a long, long day.”

He watched, part irritated, part interested, as she kicked off her keds and stretched her legs, bending her ankles and wiggling her bare little bubble toes. The line of her thighs was taut, peeking out of denim shorts way too short to be decent.

“Yeah.” Even as he tried to hold onto his grudge, he couldn’t help but lick his bottom lip as her arms reached behind her back, twisting up inside her shirt and popping the tie underneath. “Must be so exhausting, gossiping with the girls all day.”

Her head quirked to the side and she gave him an appraising look, even as her hands searched inside her sleeves, one after the other, finding the loose ties of her bikini top and pulling them off her arms. Her right hand dangled the cloth on outstretched fingers and she dropped it to the ground.

“Now, now, Logan, we’ve talked about this.” She sighed dramatically. “It’s a tough job, being Queen Bee. It’s not all gossip and pillow fights, you know.”

He pouted. Again. Some more.

“Okay.” She admitted, kindly, with a twinkle in her eye. “Sometimes it is. Pillow fights. In our Victoria Secret underwear. With bath oils. And body lotions. And teaching each other how to kiss. With tongue.”

His shoulders sagged with relief, losing their tension.

“Don’t do that to me, Lill, it’s not nice.”

She gave him a twinkling little wink and twisted in the seat, turning her back to him, her hands gripping the hem of her shirt as she looked over her shoulder at him.

“Now come over here and oil me up.”

He didn’t hesitate, even though he knew he should, knew he should be angry and petulant and demand his answers, but she was there and she slipped off her shirt and there was all that naked, soft flesh begging to be stroked and caressed and smothered.

Lilly moaned as his fingers pushed into the right places, the tough knots in her shoulders, her neck undulated. She stretched out further, lying on her stomach and arching under his touch.

“When do I get _my_ rub down?” He still wasn’t entirely ready to let it go, push, push, pushing the buttons. Maybe he was ready for a fight, an escalation. “When do you slick _me_ up?”

“When you’re good.” She gave him a sly little grin and then swiveled her neck in its axis again. “God, there is so much crap to deal with. One of these days I’m going to let them all flounder on their own.”

He laughed, just the right amount, in the exact prescribed place she’d left for him. A good boyfriend. But the tone of his voice was teasing and just a little resentful.

“You know, the world does not revolve around you, Lilly Kane, I’m sure they’d all survive without you for a day.”

She gave a pitying, playful laugh and spun on her hip, turning to face him. Her hand came up to pat lightly on the side of his cheek and he went cross-eyed trying not to appear too lecherous staring at her breasts. At least, not this early.

“Oh, you poor, poor fool. You poor, naïve little fool.” Her fingers hooked in behind the curve of his jaw and she pulled him down to peck at his lips. “It’s a good thing you’re good in the sack.”

His wet slick fingers, greasy with coconut suntan lotion, found the sides of her ribcage and he slid them across her torso, ran them in figures up to the sides of her breasts, sat there for a moment, teasing. Lilly hated teasing; she liked direction, liked movement. Loved control.

Her teeth slid out of her mouth and bit down on her bottom lip, plump and moist. This was when she usually took over, turned demanding, laid down the rules. But there was something in her eyes, a small flicker of determination.

“You don’t get it, do you?” She sat up then, careless of her nudity and his interest in it, crossing her left leg over her right knee. “You think all I do is sit around bitching with the girls?”

It was a rare moment of Lilly Kane self doubt. Logan quirked his head and couldn’t resist.

“Don’t you?”

The punch hurt. Not a lot, but more than he’d expected, her fist gliding off his shoulder half-heartedly.

“Prick. No. It takes a lot of effort controlling people’s lives. Who’s in, who’s not, what they like, who and what and where. It’s not easy and it’s not for the light hearted. People need someone as fabulous as me.”

His thumb flickered over her nipple and he was a little gratified to see it pucker.

“You can’t possibly control everyone, Lilly.” He leaned in and blew a heated breath over the skin on her neck. She shivered. “You can’t control who people like.”

She twisted her mouth into mock thoughtfulness, straightening her shoulders.

“I make them like _you_ , don’t I? And let me tell you, that is a full time job.”

He chuckled, letting the sound of it tumble over her shoulder and into her neck.

“Oh, they love me, baby, but it has more to do with my talents.” His mouth closed in on her jugular and sucked before letting go with a pop, his fingers closed with a soft, gentle pincer grip on her nipple and tugged. “Than yours.”

Her back arched, pushing her further into him.

“I rule the fucking roost, Logan, and you better be nice to me or I’ll…” She broke off with a gasp as he bent down and closed his lips over her nipple, sucking it further into his mouth. “… ruin you so fucking fast…”

“Nice?” He grinned around the tight, tense bud and flicked it with his tongue. “Nice enough for you?”

She hummed. A low, urgent sound in the back of her throat.

“For now.”

“Yeah, yeah, better be careful or you’ll turn everyone against me.” He teased her as he ran his hand around to press flat on her back, feeling the give and take of her spine, pushing her ribcage forward so that her neck fell back and opened up her throat to him. “Let you in on a little secret, sweetheart, I’m easy to dislike given half the chance. You’ll need to pick someone else to make that claim worth listening to.”

“Mmmmm?” Another hum of interest. “Like who?”

Given what he was doing and exactly what he wanted to do very soon, Logan put a surprising amount of thought into the question. It took him thirty-eight seconds before his brain came up with the simplest, easiest, most obvious answer.

“Veronica.” He whispered the name like a dirty challenge into the valley between her breasts. “Everyone loves her, you can’t change that.”

She tensed for a second, barely there, but enough for him to feel it. Then she covered with a laugh, a deep throated, too loud laugh.

“Oh, please.” She scoffed. “At least pick someone difficult. I could gut her socially in a second.”

The absolute certainty in her voice made him pause.

“Oh really? How?”

He felt her hand scrambling between them, her fingernails finding the edges of his skin just a little too easily as she pushed him back, just a little, an inch, maybe two.

“Just like you’d cut down anyone else, dear Logan, you exploit her weaknesses.”

This made him chuckle, despite the sudden desperately thin ice they were both treading on. He pressed forward again, laying a thick, heavy kiss on the side of her neck. She endured it, but she didn’t reciprocate.

“She doesn’t have any weaknesses.”

Another kiss. A moment spared for emphasis.

“Exactly.” The entire timbre of her voice had changed, had gone from playful to precise, teasing to something deeper. “And that’s what will tear her down.”

He laughed a little, to cover more than anything else, as he thought about the day before, about the shy little laugh that echoed over the exact spot they were sitting in, the happy face that joked with Lilly.

“Lilly, I don’t…”

“Take a few of our stellar counterparts, Madison, Sean, Luke, Pam, Shelley, Dick, they don’t get it. They never will. They don’t _understand_ the idea of true innocence, it doesn’t compute. They don’t understand it, they don’t believe in it. It’s simple, really.”

Her whole posture had changed with her voice, she was barely aware of him now, the idea running rampant in her head.

“And she’s poor, Logan, don’t forget that.”

He snapped his head back to face her, but she was already laughing at him, her finger raised to his lips to stop his outburst before it even began.

“Oh fuck off, you know I don’t care. But they do.” It was as if she wasn’t speaking about her best friend, about ruining the life of someone he knew she held dear. She kept running with the idea, her eyes narrowed in thought. “And they’re more than willing to believe she’s out to take what she doesn’t deserve.”

He drew back, sat back against his heels and watched the scenario play out in expressions on her face. Interest and excitement and intrigue.

“Madison, Shelley, Pam, you know they’re so spitting jealous of her, they’ll eat up the idea she fooled Duncan. He’ll be the poor, innocent victim in her sly, underhanded, evil scheming ways. They’ll practically fall all over their feet trying to comfort him.”

Her logic so far, he had to admit, was flawless.

“Of course, we have to get rid of him. All three of us, actually. She can’t have any backers. No one will say a word against her if she still has us.” She counted them off on her fingers. “Rich boyfriend. Rich best friend. Rich… friend.”

Her voice rose a little on the word, drawing it out as she eyed him. He pretended not to notice and the edges of her lips curled up in amusement. It was always a line they danced around, never crossed.

“All gone. All alone. Poor little Veronica.”

He reached forward and grabbed her hand, tugging her towards him. She feigned reluctance for a few seconds and then allowed herself to tumble forward onto his lap.

“It’s really that easy?”

Her brows knitted in mock astonishment.

“Hell no.” She wriggled over him, deliberately causing friction where he least wanted it so soon. “You think we can just walk into school, point at someone and say ‘Don’t like her, she’s baaaaaaaaaaaaad’?”

He grabbed her hips and stilled her.

“You need a precipitating factor. Something big.” The words tumbled carelessly out of her lips, her master plan made up on the spot that she would never use. “Something heinous that you can point to and say ‘See? Those are her true colors, right there. She fooled us all.’”

The idea was almost absurd and he would have laughed had anyone else suggested it, but coming out of Lilly’s mouth they took on a frightening possibility.

“Veronica’s true color is pink.” He nibbled at her neck to distract her. “Light, pastel, baby girl pink. And everyone knows it.”

She laughed at him, then, outright and loud.

“Says you.” But Lilly was nothing if not focused and she twisted again, maneuvered herself a little further out of his reach. “If you haven’t noticed, most of our entire school is deeply stupid. And what do deeply stupid people fear the most?”

He shrugged and she batted the end of his nose with a playful finger.

“Anything that makes them _look_ deeply stupid.” And there it was, she summed it all up by uncurling her fingers one by one. “So there you have it. You ostracize her. You use a large, coincidental happening to convince everyone else she’s been lying and scheming and playing them for fools. And then you use everyone else’s prejudices against her. She’ll be outcast in no time.”

“Wow.” He breathed. “You’ve thought way too much about this.”

“Not really.” She breezed. “It’s just part of being the top of the social ladder.”

He nuzzled her neck again, his fingers sliding smoothly from her hips to her waist.

“And that’s enough to destroy her?”

“Make her an outcast? Yes. Destroy her? No.” She blew a soft raspberry with her lips, a low sound as she breathed in thought. “You really want to take her down, you start hinting about _how_ she played Duncan for such a fool. And, really, how do teenage girls ensnare hormonally challenged sex starved teenaged boys?”

Her hips ground down into his briefly and she didn’t wait for an answer.

“And if she’s so talented with Duncan, she must have learned elsewhere, right? So, while she’s been playing innocent pink little virgin, you just _know_ she’s been practicing with anyone and everyone down back on those wrong sides of the tracks.”

Her face smoothed out in fake horror.

“What a slut.”

“Lilly.” He frowned then. “That’s awful.”

“Not even the stoner geeks would talk to her then.” Then she laughed, light and airy and happy. “It’s really a good thing Veronica is so awesome. I could destroy her in a second if I wanted to.”

And with a flick of her wrist and a cheeky grin, she was back to being Lilly, and he saw true affection in her face, heard it in her voice, and it calmed him. She was a powerful and frightening child playing with her toys, sometimes.

He grabbed the sides of her head and pulled her in for a deep kiss, grinning into her mouth and almost laughing with her.

Three weeks later, Lilly Kane was dead.

***

He found her door in a daze.

He had no real memory of driving or being driven or making choices, but there he was. He had no real idea of anything anymore. It all happened around him in confusing bursts of activity. People tried to talk to him, his mother enveloped him in arms that had once been warm and welcoming and now felt strange, his father offered him a deep voiced awkward apology, food had appeared and been taken away, his clothes had changed. He wasn’t exactly sure how any of it had been done.

“Logan?” The slightly high-strung voice of Lianne Mars pulled him out of his reverie and he looked at her face, blinked at it, tried to focus. The words got lost somewhere between his brain and his mouth, cluttering the inside of his head. “Come in, come in. Veronica…”

Her voice caught on the word, tripping over the name like an obstacle, and he watched her eyes float up towards the ceiling.

“… she’s in her room…”

He nodded slowly and followed her up the stairs, pressing the toes of his shoes into the carpeted steps one by one. He hadn’t said anything, but apparently he didn’t need to. Nobody blinked at him twice in the last two days if he slipped on the social cues.

“I’ll… I’ll leave you two alone.”

Lianne Mars moved with jittery nerves and he watched her flee to safety away from them both, as if she had no idea how to talk to her daughter. He wondered who had. He hadn’t talked to anyone; he couldn’t even get in touch with Duncan.

He knocked and there was no answer, but he opened the door anyway.

“Emumph.”

Her voice was thick and slurred, pressed into the pillow with her head buried. He looked at her for a long second and it ached. He wanted to rewind the last few days, keep his eyes focused on her, because nothing that bad could be true if she was there, if she was ready to turn and smile at him. It couldn’t, it just couldn’t…

“Veronica.”

She jumped at her name, at his voice, at someone not her mother, and his heart shattered again the very second her eyes met his, the long, slow turn of her body from the bed.

_Oh my god, it’s true_.

He could see it in her eyes. Dark and shadowed and in pain.

“Logan!”

She threw herself at him, then, and he barely caught her, his arms bracketed her by instinct. Her face buried itself in his neck and he softened all over, breathing out and shuddering at the same time. Over and over again she mumbled his name, spoke it like a mantra, and he heard it in the underlying plea of her voice, the desperation.

She wanted him to tell her it wasn’t true as much as he wanted the same from her.

In answer, his hands closed over the top of her head, fingers in her soft blond hair and she choked, gulping over red-hot sobs.

“Lilly.” He tightened his grip as he felt her begin to shake. “I saw her, Logan, I saw… I saw…”

Their knees buckled and he shifted to take most of the weight as they crumpled in a slump against her bedroom door.

“She’s gone.”

It was the first time he’d said the words out loud, first time he’d really believed them.

Hours later, he was woken by voices in the hall and he felt a momentary disorientation until he caught a breath full of coconut shampoo and felt the warm rise and fall of a small body in his arms. They were lying on her bed, on top of the covers, and her fingers were clutched tightly into his shirt, holding on to him even in sleep.

Air rattled noisily and jerkily through her lungs and her cheeks looked salty and crusted with tears.

_“Leave them alone, Keith, c’mon, this is the first time in two days she’s gotten any sleep at all. She’s just… I don’t know how… they’re both…that poor girl.”_

_“I know, I know. It’s been a nightmare two days. I don’t think I can look at another crime scene photo without being sick. I can’t keep doing this, Lianne, I don’t want to. I know these people, I knew Lilly…”_

_“Have you found anything yet?”_

_“Nothing I like.”_

_“I just… I keep thinking… what if it was Veronica? What if she’d…?”_

_“I know. Me too. Me too.”_

He heard the exhaustion in Keith’s voice and the fear in Lianne’s. It was awful and everything he wanted to get away from and his eyes burned just looking about Veronica’s room every time he saw a photo or brightly colored item that reminded him of Lilly and yet, at the same time, it was peaceful.

It was grief and it was nothing like his own home.

Sunshine flooded the room the next time he opened his eyes. Bright, garish, rude, it felt obscene to have it shining so heatedly. He felt like jumping up to tear the curtains from the window, rend them into tiny little pieces until they were unrecognizable.

He felt anger.

Lilly’s last words to him had been to shout a challenge at him, to grow up and get over himself.

She smiled at him now, a glossy print stuck in the corner of Veronica’s mirror, face clear and bright and happy. She’s gone, his brain threw at him traitorously, she’s gone and someone hurt her and you didn’t stop it and you will never ever get to say sorry now.

His hands tightened and it caused a little whimper, soft and sleepy and dream hazed.

“Sh.” He whispered it softly, protectively, a gust of warm breath into the top of her head. “I’m here.”

Veronica’s face smoothed out, lost the sudden panic that had infused it, and she murmured sleepily as she dug even further into his chest. He could feel her all over, all of a sudden, small little arms and legs and waist and hips and soft shiny hair and a hot little mouth puffing air over his neck.

They were both there and Lilly was dead.

“Sh.” He wasn’t crying, he wasn’t, as he combed her hair back with his fingers. “Sh.”

Wasn’t crying as he leaned forward to press his lips across her brow and cheek and nose and lips. She blinked in confusion, shaking her head slightly as he ran his hands down her neck and arms. He couldn’t stop, didn’t want to, and buried his face into the curve of her neck, under her ear.

He was shaking and she was mewling.

“Logan, Logan, stop it!”

And then her hands were pushing him away and her face registered something other than grief.

“What are you doing?”

He blinked and jumped back, separating himself from her as cleanly as the bursting of a balloon. Short, sharp, sudden.

“I… I don’t…” The words got lost somewhere in his throat, set up camp, blocked it so he could barely breathe let alone speak. “I’m sorry… I…”

Her face crumpled a little, softened, her mouth falling slack with pity, and in that moment he felt a stab of bitterness.

“It’s okay.” Like he was a fucking child. “Logan, it’s…”

He ran his hand through his hair, standing up.

“I have to go.”

“Logan!”

But he didn’t stop.

***

“Hey, man.” Logan frowned at his best friend, a moue of perfect concern as they met at the lockers. “Duncan, what’s wrong?”

Three weeks and counting and the question still sounded empty and vapid. What wasn’t wrong?

“It’s… it’s…” Duncan stared off to the left slightly, his face pale and blank. He did a lot of things blankly lately. “My dad…”

Logan waited, sometimes it took a while for Duncan’s sentences to get all the way out. Duncan’s face crumpled a little. It surprised Logan, it was the first real emotion he’d shown for several weeks.

“The Sheriff…” Duncan breathed in hard. “Veronica’s dad took him in for questioning, they think… they think…”

It really didn’t need to be said.

***

The more he thought about it, the angrier he became.

The angrier he became, the more his thoughts drifted to a small, blonde girl with wide eyes and a perky little mouth.

She had been there. She had been at the memorial service they’d held days after and, after they’d finally released her body for burial nearly a month after, Lilly’s funeral. Veronica had been there, broken and crying and holding onto him for comfort.

She’d been there and she’d seen Jake break down. She’d seen how devastated the man was, unable to comprehend or believe or accept the truth. She’d have to be blind or heartless to think that the man who’d literally been unable to stand upright because he was sobbing too hard could have done that to his own daughter.

He wondered when she’d known. Wondered if her father had sat her down to talk about it, to discuss the Kanes and the possibility of them hurting Lilly. Wondered if Veronica had met him with big, sad eyes and a haunted look on her face day after day and not said anything to his face.

Had she known, at the funeral watching Jake try to grieve, had she known then? Had she traded looks with her father questioning the Kane’s sincerity behind their backs?

The more he thought about it, the angrier he became.

***  
 __

Twisting and turning  
Your feelings are burning  
You're breaking the girl  
She meant you no harm  
Think you're so clever  
But now you must sever  
You're breaking the girl

 

He watched the press conference on television, Dick and Cassidy and Luke on the sofas next to him. Logan’s eyes narrowed with each growing second as he watched Jake Kane cry for the cameras. The fucking vultures couldn’t even leave him alone for one day.

“I don’t believe this shit.”

His finger itched to change the channel, sweating on the remote, but he didn’t. That was his best friend standing there, next to his father, quietly shattering for the world to see.

“Duuuude.” Dick stage whispered for the entire room to hear. “You think the Sheriff really thinks he did it? Thinks he hurt… you know.”

The name hovered thick in the air, unsayable and unforgettable.

“Jake Kane didn’t fucking kill anyone.” His jaw clenched and bile rose in his throat. “There’s no fucking way.”

There were years in Logan’s memory, years worth of afternoons and weekends and holidays spent at the Kane house. Hours spent with the man himself, kind hearted and kind eyed who’d never, as far as Logan knew, even raised his voice let alone a hand to his children.

They looked at him warily, unsure of what to say and how.

A soft smoke of memory filtered through Logan’s brain, Lilly laughing. It pierced him right through.

“He can’t do this.” As an advertisement finally took over the screen and the conference disappeared, Logan flicked the television off. He breathed in harshly. “It’s not right.”

Confusion rippled in the air, the lost, unsure aura they’d carried for the past five weeks. Nobody knew how to act around him anymore, they stopped talking in the middle of sentences and cast guilty glances his way. Like he cared what they had to say.

Duncan was absent at best and now everyone was looking at him for cues. He pushed himself off the sofa with a sudden purpose.

“He can’t get away with it.”

It took less than an hour to call people, to get them there. It took even less to convince them why.

They stood in a group at the edge of the footpath, an inch or two from stepping on the grass. The air crackled with growing resentment, the scrape of shuffled feet on the cement, the silence of questioning glances.

Logan waited patiently and they waited for him.

Inside his pocket sat his cell phone. There were five missed calls already, he’d checked on the way over. She’d left three messages on his voicemail. The first nervous. The second apologetic. The third almost scared and questioning.

Like clockwork, the light above the front door turned on.

He counted to three and braced himself.

She stepped out onto the path warily and as she walked closer to where they stood, he saw the past few weeks etched into the shadows on her face. Deep, dark bruise like shadows that anchored the corners of her eyes, lines pinched the corners of her mouth.

She’d been crying, he could see it in the red raw skin of her eyelids, the bloodshot eyes.

“Logan? I called…?”

He saw the second she registered the rest of them, Dick and Sean and Luke and Caz and Steve and Karl, among others, saw the confusion begin to war with the fear.

“What… what are you doing?”

“Why?” He wanted it to sound angry, to sound challenging, but it came out cracked and broken. “Why is he doing it, Veronica?”

Her shoulders heaved, a long-suffering sigh from deep within.

“I don’t know. I tried to…”

But he couldn’t give her time to explain herself, not if he wanted to do it properly.

“Bullshit.” He spat the word out and she recoiled physically, blinking back as if it had hurt. “You didn’t try, you couldn’t have. Your father just accused Jake Kane of… of… doing that. And you let him.”

She shook her head, biting her lip as she crossed her arms protectively around herself.

“Don’t do this, Logan, please.”

“Hey.” He asked it conversationally, casually, with a bit too much venom. “You think that’s what Mr. Kane asked your dad when he was interrogating him?”

A single lonely tear slid out of her left eye, sliding a silver trail down her cheek as she clutched herself tighter. She gave a quick glance behind him, to the others, but settled back on him.

“You’re too angry, Logan. We shouldn’t do this now.” She took a step back. “Let’s talk about this tomorrow, okay?”

She knew, he could see it in her eyes; she was beginning to figure it all out. He’d always known she was too intelligent for her own good. He shook the paper bag in his right hand and the rattle came through loud and clear.

“Logan…”

A low, soft, warning plea. A last ditch appeal to his better side. The paper bag dropped to his feet.

She swallowed, deep, and braced her own shoulders for battle.

“I’m not going to let you do this, Logan.”

“Step aside, Veronica.” A simple, easy, impossible instruction to follow. “I’m not asking.”

She shook her head again, disappointment and disbelief.

“If you have a problem with my dad, Logan, take it up with him. Don’t come around looking for a fight when you know he’s not here. That’s a coward’s way out.”

He shrugged, but the next second, after a low rumble of discontent behind him, his lip snarled. The natives were getting restless and she had too much of the upper hand.

“You know what he’s done, don’t you?” He took a deliberate step forward, lifting his shoulders to gain more height on her. He felt he should crow with triumph when she unconsciously stepped back from him, but his heart just wasn’t in it. “You know and you can stand there and defend him? Jake Kane welcomed you into his house, Veronica, he was nothing but nice to you and this is how you repay him?”

Her face morphed in front of his eyes, rippled with grief and anger and helplessness. He had to look away from the tremble in her chin, the paleness of her skin.

“Logan, please…” But then she stopped, her face changing again, setting, and her voice was forceful. “My father, he has his reasons, he has to… he wouldn’t just…”

“But he did!” And the words felt good spewing out of his mouth, released and angry. “And you’re defending him!”

Her eyes widened in panic for a second.

“No! I…” She looked behind her shoulder, as if checking the entry to her house was still open, checking the avenue for escape. “I don’t know. I don’t know, Logan! What do you want me to say?”

He held his hand outstretched, offered her the can and she blinked, her mouth forming a horrified little ‘oh’.

“It’s easy, Veronica.” He stepped forward again and she stepped back, clearly wanting more than space between herself and the moment. “It’s quite simple, really. You’re either with us, with Lilly, your supposed best friend, or you’re against us.”

She flickered for a moment, becoming little more than a wisp of smoke, and he blinked at the image, at the feel of her sobbing in his arms, the memory of her voice scratched out with sorrow and sleeplessness.

“Stop it.” Her voice was small and frightened and it made the spit curdle inside his mouth. “Please, please, not like this. Please?”

She knew it. He knew it. The restless crowd behind him knew it.

“Where are you standing, Veronica?” He pretended to be bored, listlessly checked his wrist for the time, and hoped she didn’t see that he was literally shaking. “We’re on a schedule here.”

A single tear began to slide down her cheek and he couldn’t take his eyes off it. It drew his attention and for a second, a brief second, he wanted to reach out and stop it, let it pool on his finger. Then he breathed in and looked up, met her eyes again.

“I guess that’s your choice, then, isn’t it?”

He moved forward, side stepping her, and strode towards the large, blank wall of her garage. The spray can lifted in his hand, aimed. He felt her before he heard her, a small hand gripping his arm and pulling him back.

“Logan, no…”

It was instinct, reaching down to pull her off him, his fingers closing in on her forearm, pinching into the soft flesh there. As she flinched at the touch, her eyes met his and he felt regret.

But it was too late. His act was the signal and before he’d even had time to let her go, a loud whoop was heard behind him. Toilet paper sailed in long white ribbons across the yard and into the trees, a sudden crash heralded the toppling of the letterbox, destruction and chaos reigned.

“Why?” She’d given up hope of changing his mind, he could see it in the quiet resigned slump of her shoulders, the listless way she looked at him. “Why, Logan?”

He’d known her for over four years and he’d never thought he’d ever be put in this situation.

“Because you were supposed to be one of us.” The words tasted bitter on his tongue, false and sour, but they flew out with a sudden release, a feeling of liberation so intense he couldn’t bite them back. “You were supposed to love Lilly like she loved you.”

Her face paled and she grew still.

“I did love Lilly.”

It was quiet and hushed and whispered and he barely heard it over the din around them. He sneered at her, then, cold and harsh and cruel.

“Just not enough, huh?”

She cried and he turned his back, spray-painting an unoriginal slogan across the wall, something about Mars and Neptune and getting the fuck out of where they obviously didn’t belong.

He wanted her to go away, he wanted her to turn around, go back into the house, anything, anything other than standing there watching him. Her eyes accused him, silent and broken, her chin trembling and her arms limp by her side.

She cried and he couldn’t stand it.

***

He waited for the fall out, but it didn’t come.

There were no knocks on his door, or deep, stern voices talking in the hallway, no telephone calls to his father. There was no word from anyone else, either; nobody called him to report the same over the weekend. Veronica had watched them do it; he couldn’t imagine her not volunteering the names to the Sheriff.

On Sunday night he drove past the house.

It was dark and quiet and dreary. There was very little movement in the street; only two people. A portly man in an old shirt with slumped shoulders, wearily scrubbing the side of the garage with a broom and a small blonde girl with her hair tied back in a scarf scraping lumps off the cement of the drive.

They worked in silence in the dark.

Logan idly wondered where Mrs. Mars was and why she wasn’t part of the depressing little clean up, why most of it hadn’t been done during the day when Keith had been at the station. He could only see one car in the drive.

It was a flat form of curiosity, a bored little interest that kept him watching. Veronica heaved against the effort, straining into the movement with a misplaced frustration that he could see from a fair distance. Her back shook in the moonlight.

He didn’t know what it was. That spike that ate at him whenever he saw or thought of her. Mere weeks before, he would have given his life defending her, they all would have, but… but… Lilly was gone. Lilly was dead. They would never spend the afternoon together again, Lilly would never laugh or smile or blow big fat raspberries at his suggestions or roll her eyes or eat fries smothered with ketchup.

And Veronica didn’t fucking care.

Logan pressed the horn long and deep and she stumbled.

In the rearview, as he drove away, he saw her look up.

***

Monday was the next hurdle.

It was one thing to get a group of emotional, angry, frustrated and confused teenaged boys riled up on the evening of such a highly charged event, it was quite another thing to sustain it on a calm morning in front of an entire student body.

Some people, he knew, he would have no problems with.

He knew the instant she walked into the building. It flew in ripples through the air, a buzz of interest and expectation. A murmur that ran along the hall, that turned heads, that made everyone look to him. He walked casually around the corner, his head held high and straight.

Veronica Mars stood next to her locker and he took the moment to seethe a little.

She looked tired, tired and nervous, unsure of herself. Her arms cradled her books to her chest and she was breathing harshly. Crying, he realized, crying and trying to stop it. Next to her, face full of sympathy and concern, stood one of his biggest challenges.

“Meg.” He greeted her cheerfully, purposefully turning his back on Veronica. “What’s up?”

Meg’s eyes narrowed at him, twin little points of accusation.

“What are you doing, Logan?”

He leaned forward, helpful and encouraging.

“I’m doing my public service, apparently.” It was said clearly and the words carried all the way over the crowd. “You don’t seem to have heard. Mars doesn’t belong in Neptune anymore.”

“Oh.” She breathed in, readying herself for a tirade as she pointed her finger hard into the middle of his chest. “I’ve heard! I heard…”

“Look.” He hissed it, grabbing her finger hard and not letting go. “This doesn’t concern you, Meg, in so far as you need to just walk away.”

She pulled out of his grasp and glared.

“Veronica is our friend.”

He laughed.

“Veronica is a fucking traitor who deserves everything she gets.”

Meg’s eyes went wide.

“Logan!”

“Stop.” It came small and halted, but firm, that little voice behind him. “Meg, don’t. He’s just… he’s just angry.”

He spun around.

“Angry? You wanna know what makes me angry, Veronica?” She flinched under his glare and he inflated for it. “Lilly actually trusted you. She cared for you and this is how you repay her? You’re nothing, not anymore.”

It was like a science experiment, a cruel, heartless little science experiment. Veronica was the bug pinned to a felt board and he watched with detached curiosity as her face crumpled again, broke against all her efforts.

“I didn’t do anything.”

But her protest was too small and nobody heard and he sneered at her tears.

“You really didn’t need to, did you?”

A heavy hand landed on his shoulder and spun around. Logan found himself face to face with his next biggest challenge.

“What do you think you’re doing?” Duncan hissed at him, anger oozing out of his every pore. “I just heard about all the pranks you…”

He reached up and took Duncan’s hand off his shoulder, carefully setting it aside in the air to his left.

“I’m doing what needs to be done, Dunc, I’m cleaning house.”

There was a crowd building and Logan honestly couldn’t blame them. Seeing what Duncan’s reaction would be, any emotion at all whatever it might be, was something that held his attention. He was eager and hungry to see what Duncan would do.

“Leave her alone.” Duncan said. “Just stop, okay? Whatever you think you need to do, just stop.”

Logan raised his eyebrows in challenge.

“You want me to stop?” He took a step back and gestured towards Veronica who was watching them both curiously, fear showing in the cracks of her eyes. “Then just say so, man.”

Duncan’s face twitched and Logan smiled.

“You haven’t said a word to that bitch in weeks, Duncan, long before Lilly. If she’s really worth it, take her back. Take her back now, in front of everyone, and none of this happened. I’ll get down on my knees now and kiss her feet.”

It was almost pitiful, that small flicker of hope behind Veronica’s eyes when he said it, the way she looked at Duncan in expectation. He saw it and he latched onto it and he watched for the moment it would go away.

Duncan’s fist bunched by his side and his face turned red.

“Come on, man.” Logan nodded towards her again. “What’s it gonna be? You gonna kiss her? You want her back? You her shining knight in armor?”

“Fuck it.”

With a big burst of air, releasing a tightly held breath, Duncan spun on his heels and walked away. Logan drank in the anguish that spiked in Veronica’s eyes. He was as confused as she was when it came to Duncan.

But that didn’t mean he was above using it to get to her.

“Aw.” He pouted in exaggeration as he turned back to Veronica. “Looks like the Donut doesn’t want you any more. He ever tell you why? Did he?”

He knew Duncan hadn’t. He’d done his own interrogations of both Duncan and Lilly and he was as far away from the answer as Veronica herself. At first, he’d been confused. Now, he just figured Duncan was smarter than anyone else.

Veronica’s head shook against her permission, he watched her eyes widen in fear when she realized the gift she’d just given him.

“Hey, do you think it’s because you’re a back stabbing bitch who betrays everyone she knows when they need her the most? Do you?”

“Logan!”

He ignored Meg, ignored the growing rumble around them, the too loud whispers of interested onlookers.

“Or is it because he found out the truth? Did Duncan find out your big secret?” He paused, waited, and smiled to himself when he knew that even Meg wasn’t going to interrupt him now. She was as curious as everyone else about what he was going to say. “Did you finally let poor deprived Duncan into your pants and all he found was the fingerprints of everyone else?”

A deep wave of gasps flew across the hall.

“That’s enough, Logan.” Meg frowned at him. “Stop it. Lilly wouldn’t want this. You know she wouldn’t. Not like this.”

Logan nodded, looked Meg straight in the eye, and set forth the challenge.

“You’re right, Meg, you’re absolutely right.” His voice was sharp, precise and completely calm. “What Lilly would have wanted is obviously for her father to be accused of bashing in her skull. Is that what you’re telling me? Is that how Lilly wanted it? Should we be thanking Veronica?”

Meg’s face slackened, lost the determination to do good, and she took a step back.

There was no answer.

“Now you need to go join the rest of your friends…” He made a big deal of pointing down the hall in the opposite direction to the one he knew Veronica’s next class was in. “… right. Over. There.”

When Meg slunk away, pulling her arms and shoulders in close to avoid him altogether, he turned his attention fully on the tiny girl in front of him. He had never seen her cry so much. Not in the four years he’d known her.

It wasn’t enough.

She looked down to the floor, refusing to meet his eyes, her books clutched desperately to her chest so that her knuckles were turning a stark white. She looked as if she was wishing with all her might that he would disappear.

He could grant her that wish.

Taking a large, deliberate step forward, Logan made as if to shoulder bump her out of the way, right into the set of lockers, and she looked up with alarm. At the last moment, he drew back with a grimace, making a show of not wanting to actually touch her.

Plenty of snickers and one little whimper followed him down the hall.

***

He had spent weeks after Lilly died in a stupor, an almost catatonic daze doing things automatically.

Nothing made sense. Not really. He hadn’t spent a great deal of time thinking about it, every time he’d pictured Lilly or thought about Lilly or even imagined the scent of her perfume on an old shirt she’d worn to sleep one night, Logan’s brain had shut down.

Literally.

He’d find himself sitting down with clenched hands, his jaw aching from clenching his teeth too hard, his eyes watering and body jerking in tremors he could barely control. It wasn’t just grief, it was anger. Pure, unadulterated fury.

Someone had done something so horrific that it defied mere words.

Someone had done it to _Lilly_.

And nobody knew who.

He had wanted to hit someone. Go right up to them and use his fists like never before, smash in their nose and jaw and eye sockets until their face was nothing but a pulpy mess, wanted to pick up a blunt object and obliterate the shape of their skull for what they’d done.

He still wanted to.

But there was no one.

Every time he’d asked, walking quietly and somberly into the Mars household, trailing after a shoulder slouched Veronica to look in the sunken face and nervously twitching hands of Lianne Mars and the deeply shadowed eyes of Keith Mars, every time he’d asked the sheriff had told him the same thing.

There was nothing useful, no leads that panned out.

Now, now he knew why. Because Mr. Mars hadn’t been looking. He’d been in his office chowing down on donuts and coffee and sticking his thumbs up his ass while looking for the easiest scapegoat around.

And Veronica liked it that way.

Well fuck him and fuck her.

Which is why, when Duncan cornered him in the bathroom three days later and asked him exactly what the hell he was doing and why, Logan was able to look him straight in the eye and say without a hint of regret that he was doing what needed to be done.

“What the hell did she ever do to you, Logan?” Duncan almost hissed the word. It was the strongest emotion he’d shown in months. “And I don’t mean this crap you’ve been spouting, tell me something she ever did to you personally.”

Duncan had been nothing but a shadow of his former self. Hollow and dull and dulled, answering questions by rote in a monotone voice with a drone of non-emotion. He hadn’t so much as blinked on his own steam since Logan had seen him right before he’d gone off to that soccer game four weeks before.

It was nearly worth everything to see a reaction and he seriously considered ending it just to see gratitude in the face of his best friend, relief, an ease to the tension that had been growing in his face every time a bad word had been sad about or to Veronica.

Nearly.

Because, while his brain had been weighing the option of just giving in, it had also been searching for an answer to the question. A reason. A justification. A vilification.

“She broke me and Lilly up.”

It came to him out of nowhere. And his brain sparked with connection. Synapses flew like tiny spiders spinning webs until the idea formed, solid and whole and bitter, sitting on the edge of his tongue and giving him what he needed.

Duncan’s brow furrowed in confusion.

“That party.” Logan continued, louder and with growing confidence. “She told Lilly about Yolanda, she broke us up and that’s why Lilly was alone, that’s why I wasn’t there. I wasn’t there, Duncan!”

Duncan shook his head slowly and Logan wasn’t sure if it was disagreement or disappointment.

“She did it out of spite and you know it. And if I’d been there, if I’d been with…”

His throat closed and he looked to the side, catching sight of himself in the mirror out of the corner of his eyes. His face was red and his fists were clenched against the sides of his thighs and he looked, for a fraction of a second, like his father.

It was enough to deflate him.

“So you can’t tell me.” He unfurled his right hand and jabbed his forefinger at Duncan. “That she’s innocent in all this, not when she turned her back on you and on me and on Lilly… on Lilly! Don’t you fucking dare, D.”

***

He found her in the parking lot during the lunch hour.

Sitting on the gravel with her back against the monstrosity she’d been so proud to call her car, her knees pulled up to her chest and her head buried, she was crying. Not a deep, choking sob, but a tired, exhausted, broken little weep.

His heart beat rapidly as the thought came to him that he’d won.

“Awww, Ronnie.” She jumped at the sound of his sarcastic drawl. “Hard day?”

She scrambled to stand, her feet searching for purchase as she pushed off her legs, sliding her back up the vehicle door. The back of her right wrist smeared a messy stripe across her face and her eyes met him with a look of fear.

“Go away, Logan.”

Like hell.

“Can’t I be concerned?” The steel in his voice suggested anything but. “Can’t I be there for an old friend when they need it? Isn’t that what friends do?”

The spike in the question hit home and she turned to open her door, her hand trembling on the handle. He reached out before she could succeed, stepped forward and closed his hand over hers, trapped her against the car.

“I asked you a question, Ronnie.”

He felt her shudder under him, take a huge breath and he waited.

She exploded in a burst of sound and energy, pushing him away and growing with her own pent up fury.

He stumbled two steps back and then stopped to watch.

“Get away from me, Logan! Leave me alone! I’m sick of it! Stop throwing spit balls at me and slamming into me in the halls and dumping my books and leaving nasty notes in my locker! Just stop it!”

Her foot stamped on the ground in impotence and her face scrunched up under the curtain of hair she flung back over her shoulders.

“I get it, you know. You think I don’t, Logan, but I do. You’re angry. You need someone to blame and I’m it, I get it, but back the fuck off, okay? Because I’m going to tell you something and you better listen. One day you’re going to realize what you’re doing, you’re going to see the shit you’re pulling for what it truly is and it will be too late. One of these days you won’t be able to take it back and I won’t accept your apology.”

Over the course of her speech, she’d slowly run out of air and the anger had eased from a torrent to a trickle. He wondered how long she’d been practicing, how often she’d sat in front of the mirror getting it just right.

“Oh, really, Veronica?” His jaw slackened in a parody of shock. “Oh, really? Is it true? Am I going to see the error of my dastardly ways? You going to show the Grinch Logan he really does have a heart? You going to show me the goodness of puppies and kittens and brown paper packages tied up with string?”

She rolled her eyes and he stepped forward again.

“Let me tell you a few home truths of my own. When it comes to you, Veronica, I have no fucking heart. I will never regret honoring the memory of my girlfriend. I will never ask you for a stick of gum, let alone forgiveness. And, no, Veronica, there is no santa clause.”

He turned to walk away.

“You wait, Logan.” She called after him. “One of these days, you’ll understand and it will be too late.”

“Tell it to someone who cares, Ronnie.”

“I won’t let you do this.” He tried to walk faster, to get out of earshot, but the words found him anyway. “I’m not going to just lie down and take it.”

Something inside him clicked and he turned with a vicious smile.

“Guess it’s game on, then, Veronica.”

***  


  
_Come  
as you are  
as you were  
as I want you to be  
as a friend  
as a friend  
as an old enemy_   


Veronica Mars was an ostrich.

That was a lesson that Logan learned fairly quickly. When threatened, she stuck her head in the sand, didn’t look anyone in the eyes, and tried to look as invisible as possible. When she was forced to look up, she did so with a wide-eyed ‘who me?’ expression. She avoided confrontation as much as possible, she stayed quiet, she stayed in the shadows, walked carefully and kept her mouth shut. 

It began to annoy him. 

She was obviously reacting as little as possible, waiting for the storm to pass, hoping to come out the other end unscathed and undamaged. He wasn’t going to let that happen. She had no right. There was no way she’d ever be let past the velvet ropes again. 

They’d all learned their lesson. 

It was like an avalanche, snowballing from an idea, a half formed spark of bitterness, to an entity beyond his control. He doubted he could stop it even if he wanted to. And there was certainly no danger of that happening. 

Some of them had acted relieved, as if they’d finally been able to stop pretending. As if being nice to Veronica had been the chore all along. Some of them had been confused, but hadn’t wanted to rock the precarious and delicate boat that had existed since their queen had gone. Then there had been a few dissenters, questions had been asked, and dispute had rippled through their little group. 

Logan had stood behind Duncan, pushed him forward as the grieving brother, the poorly done by, the maligned and betrayed. He’d pushed him to the forefront to be their new king and had gladly followed behind. 

And wherever the 09ers goest, so shall the herds go. 

A few low key words with the right people, a few quite public dressing down of her more loyal supporters, and Veronica was a lone wolf. It was a dangerous thing to be seen talking with her, helping her, even smiling at her. It was the easiest way to become a target. 

And still, she acted as if it was temporary, as if Logan were a child having a tantrum about girl cooties and would change his mind any second. As if nothing important, say the death of her best friend, had ever happened. 

She needed to learn how to grieve. 

If it was the last thing he would do, he would show her what proper grief was. How to actually _feel_. Show her that this pale, halfhearted attempt to look sad did nothing but spit all over Lilly’s memory. If she had any fucking heart at all, he wanted to see it break. 

She owed that much, at least. 

He wanted something, anything, like that afternoon in the parking lot. He remembered the anger in her eyes and the way she’d yelled at him, had actually shown pain and hurt and fear. 

He wanted that and somehow he would find a way to get it.

***

His phone rang at ten thirty on a Saturday morning. 

“I will physically hurt you.” He mumbled it half into the phone, half into the pillow still mushed against his face. “Go away.”

“Duuuuuuuuuude.” The voice of Dick Casablancas slid into his ear, tinny and thin. “You wanna hear this.”

His free hand fumbled its way across the pillow to wipe the Grey Goose flavored drool from the side of his face and his eyes tried to blink against the sunlight streaming through his window. His head pounded repeatedly, a dull, thick, heavy thump that threatened to explode his brain.

“Hear what? And, Dick? It better be good.”

There was a loud intake of breath over the phone; a sign of a long-winded speech Logan had no patience to hear. 

“Beaver just told me that one of his friends has a brother that works security over at a bar, some real dive, and he was workin’ the late shift last night.”

He gritted his teeth. 

“I’m going to punch you in the kidneys, Dick.”

“Guess who was passed out on the bar and had to be carried home?”

He worked his jaw open and closed, trying to dislodge the all too familiar taste of hangover. 

“I don’t know… fucking Tara Reid?”

“Ronnie’s mom.” The two words were whispered with a glee reserved for children at Christmas and Logan sat up straight. “The Sheriff had to come pay her bill and pick her up, drag her sorry ass home again. And from all accounts, he looked pissed.”

His headache was gone. 

“Fuck.” He hissed. “I’d drink if I had to be her mother, too.”

God bless Dick’s penchant for gossip. 

***

He walked into school with a spring in his step on Monday. 

The sun was shining, his pants were pressed, his car was freshly polished and shined and he had a brand new weapon. 

She’d grown immune to the every day regular insults, the snide little looks and whispered comments. She’d learned to hide the flinch when someone said something nasty, learned to hold her expression immobile when she picked spitballs out of her hair, when she found newspaper and magazine articles questioning her father’s competence taped to her locker. 

It was time to get serious. 

He watched her walk to her locker, head straight and eyes down, foot in front of determined foot, he watched her reach up and pull the offending articles off the door without looking at them, her fingers scrunching them up with a ferocity not seen on her blank face. 

He reached out and grabbed Casey on the walk there.

“So, Gant?” He asked loudly, making sure his voice carried to the locker less than five feet away. “Have a good weekend?”

Casey frowned in confusion for a little bit, then nodded. 

“Yeah, sure. You?”

Logan nodded. 

“Oh, absolutely. So, what did you do? You hook up?”

As predicted, Casey blushed. It was a well-known fact that Casey Gant, future millionaire and much sought after trophy of Neptune girls’ hearts and loins, had just started a relationship with Darcy Fillon and he was in what was commonly referred to as A Dry Spell. 

“Uh.” He shook his head. “No, man, no.”

Logan shrugged helpfully. 

“Want some help? I know this real easy chick.”

Out of the corner of his eyes, he saw Veronica’s shoulders tense. 

“I… uh…” Casey looked to the left; he’d obviously caught the gist and hoped for an escape. “No, it’s cool…”

Logan smiled, big crocodile smile, all teeth. 

“You know a woman named Lianne? I mean, yeah, a bit skanky, sure, but easy as.”

A locker door slammed shut with a crash. Casey’s eyes flickered to the side and back with a shake of his head. 

“You know what they say, right? Two drinks and she’s anybody’s.” He grinned. “Three and she’s everybody’s…”

He felt a shove in his side and recovered in enough time to see a tiny blonde tornado pushing into the girl’s bathroom. 

***

There was a strange tension in the air. 

For an hour, maybe two, people had come to him in faux congratulations at making Veronica cry, but really for the gossip. They wanted to know. What had he heard? Truths were stretched and embellished and before long Veronica’s mother had been seen offering head for cigarette money by at least a dozen Neptune High seniors. 

And then, out of nowhere, people stopped talking to him. 

They gave him a wide berth, sneaking looks at him out of the corners of their eyes, watching him. He felt rather than heard the whispers. It skated down his spine and made his stomach curl in suspicion. It set his teeth on edge, made him jumpy. 

It had to have something to do with that shrew. Maybe she’d found something to use against him. Maybe she’d gotten a foothold without him knowing it. 

Two girls chattering mindlessly to each other fell silent as he walked by, giving him wide eyed bambi stares of innocence. He could practically hear their inner thoughts praying for him to pass them by. 

“What?” 

He couldn’t help spinning back to face them, voice too loud for the corridor, making them flinch and give each other helpless glances. 

“What is it?” He demanded. “The fuck has that bitch done now?”

“It’s not…” The smaller of the two stuttered, she had mousy brown hair and too many freckles. “It’s not Veronica.”

Her friend, a brunette with nervous green eyes, shook her head, clutching the strap of her book bag to her shoulder. 

“It’s.” She started, then paused, and then looked to her friend for help. “I don’t…”

Logan could feel the blood vessels inside his head throb. 

“It’s the video.” Whispered the freckled girl reluctantly. “Someone released the video. It’s on the internet.”

He looked from one to the other, trying to read the truth in their faces. 

“Wonderful.” He said eventually. “What video?”

Their faces blanched in horror and he imagined them both backing away, turning at the last moment to flee. They looked seconds from whimpering and calling for their mommies. 

“The crime scene video.” The girl’s green eyes were paling, growing less noticeable than the white face and nervous tremble. “The… the Lilly Kane crime scene.”

He forgot them before he’d even turned around. 

The media lab was only one hallway away, he only had to walk around one corner and past five doors to get there, but it felt longer. Faces turned to look at him and now he saw the pity in them, the bright gaping maw of sorrow in their mouths, opening up to part with soundless words of apology. 

If one of them actually stopped him, he would hit them. 

He heard voices before he entered the room. 

He didn’t really know what he was doing there. He didn’t think he wanted to see. It wasn’t how he wanted to remember Lilly. He wanted to think about her laughing at the top of her lungs scheming ways to annoy her mother, wanted to remember the feel of the skin at the side of her neck, wanted to remember the way she’d get the hiccups after one glass of champagne and use it as an excuse to skull another two. 

Already those memories were being tainted, the theories of everyone around them bleeding into his mind, ashtrays and violence and images of blood and choking pain. 

Maybe he needed to see the truth to quell all the nightmares he’d been having, to prove to himself his own imagination was worse than the reality. 

Maybe if he saw it, he could let that part of it go. Just see it and move on. 

Until he saw Veronica. Saw her face bleach of all color as she watched a computer screen over the shoulders of two guys. 

Hadn’t she had enough? Didn’t she get the actual visual?

In a flash, Logan was punched in the stomach by a sense memory, the feel of Veronica breaking down in his arms and sobbing, the smell of her hair as he tried to comfort her, the sound of her cracked voice trying to verbalize and articulate the horror of what had been lying by the pool that day. 

He’d told her she was brave, that she was strong, that she could survive more than she thought she could. 

He’d told her that he would always be there for her. 

She’d believed him; she’d clung to him in that first week, made him believe he was worth a lifeline. 

And then she’d taken it back. 

She almost ran into him, breathless and gasping as she looked up and realized who it was. 

His eyes narrowed. 

“So, uh, does your dad still think that Lilly’s father did this?”

***

It didn’t take long for the masses to assign blame. 

Scapegoats were running thick and fast in Neptune and Keith Mars was a sitting duck. A large, fat, squat, hard to miss duck with a target painted on his back. It had only been a matter of time. Logan wasn’t really sure who started the rumor, but he was damn sure not disagreeing with it. 

He could feel electricity sizzle along his nerves as Duncan told him about Jake’s plan to have Keith removed from office. It sat in his brain for a day, the twenty-four hours before the news went public, a squat little mushroom of secret knowledge. 

They got their hands on extra campaign posters before the emergency election. _Vote Don Lamb!_ was plastered all over Veronica’s locker, it sat folded and fed into the slats, it was shoved crumpled and distorted into the exhaust of her car. She found fliers of it stuffed inside her books. 

People walked up close behind her and said “Go Don”, veering away before she could see who they were.

Logan made a big show of announcing his movie star father’s unequivocal support for the unknown deputy. Others followed suit. It was almost required, assumed, a statement of fact. _I breathe. I need food to live. My parents are voting Keith Mars out of office. The sky is blue._

The Monday after the election, he had a cake delivered to her table. It was large with pink and white frosting, colored balloons decorated the top with ‘congratulations!’ spelled out. He watched her face dance for a while, confusion and suspicion and mortification and defeat. 

He bit his tongue and kept watching. 

Waited and watched… and watched… and, yes, there it was. An expression of extreme reluctance furrowed her brow, distaste and curiosity. She looked down at the box on the table, leant towards it, frowned again. Logan practically bounced in his seat. She leaned closer and he couldn’t take his eyes off her, watched as she sniffed again. 

Suddenly she jumped back, knocking the box off the table as far away from her as she possibly could. 

Laughter exploded, both inside him and all around. Loud, unstoppable, cruel and vicious laughter. She ran from the courtyard with one hand covering her mouth, the other clutching her bag. Someone stretched out their foot and she stumbled, cart wheeling her arms for a second, and then tumbled. 

The laughter doubled. 

Someone slapped him on the shoulder. 

“You rock, man!”

*** 

“How do you do it?”

He stopped her progress between two tables out in the courtyard and when she turned automatically to walk away she found Caz and Dick blocking her retreat. Trapped and cornered, she took a breath and turned to face him. 

Already she knew the drill, the quicker she let him rip her to shreds, the quicker she was able to flee. 

“What?” Her voice sounded bored, but he knew better, he could hear the hesitancy and tremble of it. “Do what?”

He looked down at her and the thought came unbidden that he had inured himself to her too easily, too quickly. 

“How do you live with yourself, Veronica?” 

Her eyes look wounded and betrayed and at first it was an experiment, a game, something to do to see if he could do it, then it became a need, something he had to prove to the world. A competition of ‘who loved Lilly more’ that Veronica would never win. 

Somewhere along the way, without him knowing, it became an addiction. 

“Seriously, I want to know.” Somehow, the more anguish she showed, the more he needed it. “How do you sleep at night?”

Her eyes flashed deep and her cheeks flushed with indignation. He saw it spark bright and brief, a flicker of injustice and anger and disbelief. It spread like a ripple, shaking her shoulders into a firmer stance, her spine straighter, and her voice calmer. 

“How do you?”

As it hit him with full force, threaded him with purpose and vigor and a thrill, Logan remembered with perfect clarity that he hadn’t felt excited in a good way for six weeks. His breath became ragged as he sucked it in through tightly clasped lips. 

“Oh.” He feigned injury, clasped his hand to his chest in distress. “Did the little wounded bird just learn to fight back?”

There were sniggers around him, but he wasn’t sure he entirely cared. It echoed in the way she held his eyes and refused to look away, the flush of her cheeks, the quickening of her breath. He could see the spark of realization and connection in her eyes. 

Veronica Mars had caught his reaction, had inspected, recognized and catalogued it the instant it had happened. 

She had his number and she knew it. 

***

It became a two-person game. 

If the word ‘game’ was defined in some alternate dictionary as the desperate need for two people to tear each other down with the odds and the entire crowd highly stacked in one’s favor while the other was left to flounder by themselves. 

She learned the rules quickly; he wasn’t surprised. Veronica had always had a knack for the intricacies of instruction, putting insinuated pieces together before it was spelled out implicitly. Theory was her forte. 

It was the practical that sometimes held her back. 

She struggled, not with the idea, but with the reality of fighting back. He was more willing to hurt her than she was him. She hadn’t had much experience in withstanding adversity and he had a lifetime’s worth. Each and every hit showed on her face, in a flinch, in a stutter, in a trembling chin. He took his hits, pointed and barbed as they became, with a steady, strong well-weathered practice. 

The problem was that they knew each other too well. 

“What’d you do last night, Veronica?” He slouched casually against the lockers, leaning his head against the cool metal. “Peel your mother off the bar again?”

A deep rumble of ‘ooohs’ ran down the corridor. 

“No.” She replied cheerily, as if the momentary flicker of pain hadn’t just ridden her face for him to see, and closed her locker with a firm finality. “Yours, actually.”

His stomach twisted and his heart beat faster as she walked away. 

Catcalls sounded off amid the low rushed hum of people spreading gossip. 

***

It started with a few whispered comments at lunch. He saw the eyes looking at him and swerving away when he caught them. He knew the sound of silence that covered for conversations not meant to be held. He chewed on an egg roll thoughtfully, looking off into the distance. 

_Just ask him._

_You ask him._

_I’m not asking him._

When there was nothing left but a greasy napkin and stray crumbs on his fingers, Logan placed his feet on the ground, carefully, one by one, making his movements slow and purposeful. Nobody looked twice at him and he felt more than saw the looks and elbow-in-rib gestures. 

“Ask me what, ladies?” 

He asked it before they realized he was headed their way. They looked up with surprise and guilt. 

“Um…” Carrie Bishop blushed. 

“I was just…” Shelley shrugged; looking for an excuse to back away, and then took a breath. “It’s been seven weeks… and it’s nearly December…”

Her words trailed off lightly, questioningly. 

“We’d ask Duncan.” Carrie jumped in, trying to help. “But… he’s…”

_Currently trying to turn the cement ground into a molten pool of lava using the power of his broody glare? Trying to figure out pi to the nth degree? Figuring out why he’s wearing mismatched socks? Unable to grasp the possibility that it’s just not butter? All of the above?_

Guilt spiked briefly as his brain threw the barbs at him naturally. Duncan sat a table away, lost in his own thoughts, staring down at the ground, no emotion in sight and none in memory. Logan let the moment pass and turned his focus back to the girls. 

“What do you want?”

“No one knows what to do.” Carrie whispered at him. “We don’t want to act as if nothing…”

Shelley interrupted her, jumping in with her own guilty whisper. 

“But it’s tradition! And people need this, Logan, it’s all just so much…”

Screw tradition, was his first thought, until it finally hit him what they were talking about. December. Seven weeks. Tradition. Shelley’s end of the year party. It would be the first party since Lilly died. And he suddenly realized that they were asking his permission. 

“Fuck yes.” He told them with a vigor that registered in surprise on their faces. “We need a fucking party.”

***

Word spread like wildfire. 

_Party_. 

It was more than just a party; it was an end to the official mourning period. Logan wasn’t stupid enough to assume everyone had been as blind sighted as he was by Lilly’s death. People had been shocked, saddened, more than a little concerned about their own safety and that of their loved ones, intimidated by the closeness of it, but they hadn’t _felt_ it. 

And, truth be told, the word sparked something in him, too. 

His skin itched with the idea. He wanted it. He wanted to forget, for just a minute, that he was lost and lonely and aching. He wanted to see if he could do it, wanted to see if he could do something that wasn’t on autopilot. 

His brain began a count down clock. 

_Two weeks_

_Twelve days._

_Eleven days, fifteen hours and ten minutes_

It seemed like it would never come, like Christmas to a four year who just saw tinsel in a shop window at the start of December. 

“Hey man.” Sean turned his desk to face Logan, careless of the loud scrape of wood across the floor that sounded throughout study hall. “You heard about Shelley’s?”

Logan frowned his boredom. 

“Yeah.”

Luke swiveled in his seat to face them both. Mr. Wu could be seen behind Luke’s head, sitting in his desk and looking up with bored disinterest. Logan noted the debate warring in the teacher’s head, weighing the merits of causing a disturbance breaking up the discussion or leaving them to their own devices. 

Logan kept his head down, encouraging the others to keep it quiet. 

“You going?”

“Fuck yeah.” He answered. “Who isn’t?”

“Amen.” Luke agreed and, after a pause, leaned forward. “You thinking about drinking?”

They were testing the waters, seeing where the limits lay. Logan thought about the weekends and even weeknights in the past two months he’d spent passed out, drunk and numb. 

“Was thinking about more than that.” Immediately he could see the interest take hold of them both. “We need a few party favors.”

“Alright!” 

Three chairs over, Dick voiced his hearty approval of the plan. 

“Mr. Casablancas.” Mr. Wu voiced his hearty disapproval from the front of the room. “See how enthusiastic you are this Friday in detention. Study.”

Logan, Sean and Luke sent him sympathetic looks, but not sympathetic enough to discontinue. 

“So… uh…” Sean looked from one to the other. “Who’s got what?”

Logan shook his head. 

“I’m out.”

Luke shrugged. 

“Don’t look at me.”

He could see the doubt prick into their subconscious, the doubt that he would follow through if it meant too much trouble. It irked him, caused him to stiffen. They thought he’d gone soft. Fuckers. 

“Guess we better go south of the border, then.” The surprise was instant. “Who’s with me? Friday, we leave straight after school.”

He was met with nods from both of them. 

“Dude.” Dick frowned. “Not cool.”

“Awwww.” Logan tilted his head in mock support. “S’ok, Dick. I’ll bring a piñata back for all the boys and girls in detention.”

***

Fliers went out on the Thursday. 

Not that anybody really needed them. People knew by heart the date, the time, and the place. They knew it with the counting of each breath. At any given moment, Logan could walk into a conversation and immediately know it was about what people where going to wear, to bring, to do. 

He rounded a corner at the end of the day to find Veronica standing stock still in the hall. 

It struck him that he hadn’t thought about her, not really, in over two days. She stood with a small yellow paper in her hands, looking down at it, confused and deep in thought. Logan recognized the paper immediately. 

He knew the shape of the words before his eyes sought them out. 

“Picking up trash already?” It had almost become instinct, finding an insult in any situation. “Your dad’s unemployment hit that hard?”

Her spine stiffened and her eyes hardened. 

“You’re throwing a party?” The paper shook in her hand and she waved it at him in an accusation. “You’re actually…?”

“Going to? Yes.” He snatched it from her fingers. “Throwing? No. See here? These pretty little letters? They spell out ‘Shelley’s’. Shhhhhhh-eeellllllll-eeeeeeeeeeeeeeezzzzzz.”

He shook his head sadly at her continued confusion. 

“And you used to be so good at school.”

Before he knew what had happened, she’d snatched it back. A frown crossed his brow, gave him away before he could hold it back. 

“Oh, fuck no.” He tried to pull it out of her grasp, but she held on tight. “No fucking way.”

Her fingers held onto the paper as if it was a lifeline, but her face relaxed as she looked up at him, a peaceful, serene little smile. 

“What?” He could hear the challenge in her voice. “What’s the matter, Logan?”

The tug of war was pointless, he realized, because the word had spread and nothing was secret and the paper was merely symbolic. He let it go suddenly and she stepped back with the force of it. 

“What makes you think you’re invited?”

“This does.” She turned the flier around and helpfully pointed out the printed words. “See?”

He snarled. 

“I guess Shelly figured the words ‘excluding backstabbing traitorous bitch whores’ were heavily implied.”

She screwed her mouth up in thought, nudging a finger into the divot of her chin. 

“And yet, you say you’re going. I’m so confused.”

It boiled up in him. 

“You just can’t fucking help yourself, can you?” 

She was going to ruin it all, the fragile glimmer of hope they’d all had, that they were all clinging to when it came to the party. She couldn’t let it rest, she couldn’t cease to exist and leave them all to their happy little delusions. 

“Nobody wants you there, Veronica. Nobody wants you anywhere. Don’t fuck it up for the rest of us just because you’re miserable.”

“Oh, but Logan.” She smiled, just a little bit meanly. “The possibility of me ruining the entire night only makes it that much more attractive. How can I stay away now?”

His fists clenched impotently. 

***

He returned to find Neptune in chaos. 

It had been weeks since he’d been under any misconception that his life couldn’t be swapped and turned around in the space of a few hours. He wasn’t that innocent anymore. But his eyes still struggled to understand the images plastered all over the news, his brain made the information jump a few extra hurdles before the synapses snapped into gear. 

Staring at the television, Logan felt his stomach turn to lead. 

It felt like the very definition of anti-climax. 

Lilly was bright, vibrant and _alive_. She was an entity and an energy and the man on the screen was nothing. He was none of those things. Average and pudgy, being led in cuffs to a police cruiser, he was neither memorable nor outstanding. 

To think that that nobody had been able to destroy Lilly Kane was obscene. 

It was awful and horrible. 

She should never have been taken down to start with, but it had happened and Logan had demonized it, he’d blown it up in his mind. He’d imagined some cruel evil scheme, some heinous underworld robbery gone wrong, some larger than life villain. 

But that… that… software designer out for revenge against Jake Kane was pedestrian. 

It was _un_ -Lilly. 

“It wasn’t him.” He whispered the words automatically as an afterthought. “It couldn’t be.”

“What was that?” His father looked up from the contract he was reading and, seeing the news report, his face softened. “Ah, the arrest.”

“It wasn’t him.” Logan insisted, frustration boiling up with a dozen other unnamed emotions. “Look at him! He’s a… a schlub! A nobody! He couldn’t do that, he couldn’t…”

Papers fell quietly to the small table and Logan felt a large, clammy hand on his shoulder. 

“Son. They’ve arrested him. They found evidence. It looks pretty open and shut to me.”

Aaron wasn’t listening; Logan felt the distinct feeling that nobody would listen. 

“But he’s never met Lilly once in her life!” Hours and days and weeks of blurry backlit computer screen research flew through his brain. “Did you know the FBI says over fifty percent of murder victims know their attacker?”

“Son…” Aaron tried again to calm him down, but Logan twisted out of his grasp. “I know you’re upset, but…”

“And over a third of female murder victims were killed by a boyfriend or romantic interest?”

The hand clamped down again, a little bit more forceful. 

“You were in Mexico, son. What are you trying to say?”

He shrugged, trying to escape the growing pressure, but his father’s hand remained. 

“Shit, I don’t know.” It eddied inside his head, swirled thick like sludge, refused to cooperate. “Lilly loved to flirt, what if some whacked out guy thought…?”

“You’re going to drive yourself crazy, son.” Aaron let go, but made his point with a few heavy thumps. “You have to let this go. The case is solved. Do you hear me? You need to accept it and move on.”

Logan shook his head, but it wasn’t disagreement, it was a form of acquiescence. 

“Now, who’s filling your head with all these figures?” He felt like a pouting five year old whose father was trying to bribe him with offers of candy. “It sounds like Keith Mars to me. Trying to justify his lazy police work. The evidence was obviously there to be found, but he was too busy pointing fingers at good people.”

And, like a five year old, the candy sounded too good to pass up. 

“Fuckin’ Mars family.”

He missed the glint of Aaron’s smile.

***

“Hey Ronnie.”

He cornered her in the parking lot before school. She looked wary, as if she knew what was coming, and the corners of her eyes were pinched and tight. She looked as if she’d gotten about as much sleep as he had. The thought sent a thrill down his spine. 

Good. 

“Read any papers lately?” He blocked her escape between two cars. “Watched the news?”

She didn’t look up into his eyes, kept her face pointed straight, as if he wasn’t even there. 

“I just want to get to class.”

He caught his chin between his thumb and forefinger. 

“Interesting stuff, you know. Famine in third world countries. Gas prices going up. Superstars getting thinner, getting high, getting knocked up. The usual.” He jostled forward a bit, a gesture designed to get her to look at him, acknowledge his presence. “Oh, and a whole bunch of stuff about an actual murderer getting arrested. Know anything about that?”

She shook her head, still staring at the pavement. 

“Oh, I bet you don’t.” He didn’t really give her time to retaliate. “You or your precious dad. Wouldn’t know a thing about real criminals being arrested, would you?”

There was a shift, her shoulders hunching around her torso protectively, the strap of her bag jostled and he watched the edge of her teeth bite on a lip under the curtain of hair that hid her face as she stared down at their feet. 

“Guess it wasn’t Mr. Kane after all, was it?” He pushed further, wanted to get a rise out of her, a reaction. “You think Duncan can expect his apology sometime today? It’s the least you owe him, don’t you think?”

She stepped back, edging herself out between the two cars she was trapped in. 

“I’m going, Logan.”

He reached out and caught her arm. 

“The hell you are.” The anger rose quickly and harshly. “You can’t even admit it, can you? Just say it, you were wrong. Wrong. You and your whole family were fucking wrong. Just like we said all along. You can’t just go around accusing people of that sort of thing and then think you can walk away. What kind of people are you? Jesus Christ.”

Muscles twitched under his fingers, he could feel the sinew in her arm struggle against him as she tried to pull away. 

“Tell him you’re fucking sorry, Veronica.”

She did look up at him then, an expression of confusion and distrust and a touch of fear. 

“Let me go.”

“I’ll let you go when you show an ounce of humanity. You need to apologize for what you did, to Duncan, to that whole family. That’s if he’ll even talk to you anymore. Fuck, if I were you I’d beg.”

The salt oozed out onto his tongue and he let his eyes wander up and down her body lasciviously. 

“I hear you’re real comfortable on those knees of yours.”

She pulled away with a sharp jerk, wrenching her arm from his hand and a hot spark of anger flew out of her face. It was something, it was anything, and he took it. 

“So, should we expect you at lunch, then? Begging for forgiveness? Or will you already be on your knees in the gym?” He gasped. “Should we take a number? Do you have a little ticketing machine?”

“I want you…” The words struggled out of her throat, bitten and angry and threatening to boil over into tears. “… to leave. Me. Alone.”

Logan titled his head in sympathy. 

“Aw. Did I make little Ronica upset?” He leaned forward a little, bent at the waist, and whispered meanly. “Why don’t you go cry to your mommy? Oh, wait…”

Her eyes widened and her face slackened and a flinch rode her face hard. And in that moment, he confirmed the rumor floating around the halls. Mrs. Mars had been seen packing bags into her car on the Saturday night and hadn’t been seen since. 

“Guess not even an alcoholic slut like your mom wanted to stick around after it was proved beyond a shadow of a doubt what a fucktard your dad is, huh?”

The tears fell, her bottom lip bitten under her teeth, and she shook her head. 

“Screw you, Logan.”

He chuckled. 

“Not even if you paid me, sweetheart.”

And with that, he stepped back, gave her free passage to move. He saw her weigh the option in her head, continue stepping backwards, take the long way around, or push past him and agree with the tacit permission he had given her to pass. 

She took the long way around and he smiled to himself. 

A body blocked his way to the school and he blinked up into the darkening face of Duncan. 

“The fuck is your problem, man?”

“Would you drop it?” Came the eerie fevered pitch of Duncan’s voice. It sounded as if emotion was there, struggling to get out, but just couldn’t find a way. “Would you get over this grudge you have?”

Logan sighed, deeply. 

“Not this protective bullshit again, D. Seriously, we’ve been over this.” He slapped Duncan lightly on the shoulder as he turned him around and they walked together at Logan’s push. “She’s no innocent in all this…”

Duncan didn’t resist and Logan continued to spout his reasons and by the time they got to their lockers, Duncan had either forgotten his initial protest or merely given up trying. 

Logan told himself that Duncan needed some serious reworking. Shelley’s party would do nicely. A night of fun, of relaxing, of forgetting for just a moment the kind of mess their lives were now. He needed some attention, some female attention and, if the looks Shelley were passing each and every day, that wouldn’t be too hard to organize. 

But above all, Duncan needed proof that Veronica wasn’t some innocent victim in all this. 

***

  
_Come  
doused in mud  
soaked in bleach  
as I want you to be_  


One hour into the party and Logan had lost count of the shots he’d had. Seven, eight, eleventy something. Whatever. They’d left him feeling buzzed and blurry and high and he wasn’t going to stop them coming any time soon.

There were people everywhere, familiar faces, faces he hadn’t even known he’d missed until he saw them again. Happy faces. People were enjoying themselves, there was laughter and low murmurings and giggles and shouts and the usual party fare and, if he closed his eyes and let his head drift, he could almost imagine that tragedy hadn’t knocked his feet out from under him two months before. 

Two little vials clinked in his pocket, secretive little promises of fun. They sat like an insurance policy, the knowledge that he would enjoy himself no matter what, that they all would. But, so far, he hadn’t thought it necessary. 

They fell into it like parched men in a desert finding water. 

Alcohol flowed freely and music pulsed and lights twinkled happily on a string and he called for his men and he called for his shots and he called for his fiddlers three. This was how it was supposed to be, back on top of the hill, pulling people from one group to another, changing the music upon his request, controlling them all like he’d always done. 

Always, except for… just missing a… 

A low murmur of disbelief began to hum through the crowd and he followed the path of it all the way to the source. 

“Fuck.” 

His buzz blown, Logan let the word hang low on his lips. He couldn’t believe she’d actually shown up. Veronica Mars was striding through the crowd with her head held high, as if she had any right to be there, as if anybody actually wanted her there. As if she had something to prove. 

She was looking for a fight, he could see it in the way she held her neck rigid, in the way her eyes darted from side to side, the way she took slow, steadied breaths. Well, fuck her, he wasn’t going to ruin the one night of freedom from grief they’d had in months on her. 

Her and her white fucking dress with the black bangles and accessories that would make Lilly crow in delight if she’d seen. 

Logan turned back to the bar and poured himself three more sloppy shots to throw back in quick succession. 

***

The buzz was back. No, not the same buzz. Son of buzz. 

His head swam infuriatingly and he couldn’t even stop to calculate the amount of alcohol he’d have to have done to get that effect without any added kickers. Lights blurred in the corners of his vision and people’s voices floated laughingly at him. 

He couldn’t quite concentrate on any one conversation, a few words here and few words there, and they all bled together in a confusing mix of syllables. The air grew hot and humid and cloying with sweat and sickly perfume and beer. 

He needed oxygen, he needed fresh air, he needed to breathe, maybe clear his lungs, and then he’d be fine. 

The night air swamped him when he stepped out of the doors, the roar of indecipherable noise lessened to a mere hum in the back of his head and he let his mouth fall wide open in a gape as he looked up into the large, bright moon. 

No, not a moon. Too large, too bright, too close, too tied to a string with a dozen other shapes. 

Shit, he was wasted. 

A flash of white caught his eye, a long, thin form lying on a banana lounge by the pool. 

“You stupid…” It came out of his mouth in a garbled, fuzzy little curse, but it lacked any bite whatsoever. “… little… bitch…”

He looked down at her, at Veronica, lying peacefully with her blonde hair splayed out behind her head and the fingers of one hand curled delicately beside her cheek. It overwhelmed him then, memories of her as they’d grown up, of all of them, happier times. 

He’d trusted her for so long, trusted and admired and dare he say worshipped. 

She’d been the one thing in his fucked up life that wasn’t. Amid all the glitz and glamour and fakeness and putting on a show and, hell, even and especially Lilly was good for a show, Veronica had been the literal lodestone. She’d been stable and sincere and honest and true. 

And to find out that she’d been faking most of it had literally slammed him in the guts. 

Suddenly it didn’t matter any more. It didn’t matter that she’d chosen someone that wasn’t him. It didn’t matter that she was no longer his friend, that she no longer smiled at him, that she no longer slapped his arm playfully while giggling at a filthy joke he’d just uttered. 

It didn’t matter, none of it mattered. 

He just wanted it all back. Lilly and Duncan and Veronica and happiness and the beach and sickly sweet peach wine coolers and shy smiles and long hours waiting in the sun for something and lunches at a greasy diner and car trips to San Francisco and fighting over who could choose the CD and innocent teasing and some not so innocent teasing. 

“Why’d you do it?” He fell to his knees beside the lounger, the bottle in his hand tinkling as it hit the cement but didn’t break. “Why?”

She didn’t answer him, her brow creased in confusion and she shifted her head towards the sound, but she didn’t open her eyes and he wanted her to, he wanted to see her eyes. 

“I miss you.” He accused, bitter and longing and wistful. “I fucking miss you.”

She smelled like something he’d forgotten and he leaned towards her, trying to remember. 

A night, mere weeks ago, where she slept in his arms and cried and he’d cried too and they’d held each other and he’d woken with his face in her neck. And it ached, _ached_ to the point of real physical pain.

He wanted to cry. 

“Dude!” Dick’s voice rang clear in the night air. “What the hell?”

Logan snapped his back straight, looking at the incriminating posture of himself hunched over Veronica. He lifted the bottle in his hand and did the only thing he could. 

“Bodyshots!” He gasped it like a lifeline. “She’s so wasted.”

Dick crowed and called his buddies and Logan looked down at her again. 

His knees dug cruelly into the cement and he eyed the line of her neck, the stretch of her tendon, the curves of her body as she lay there. She’d been so soft, once upon a time, so untouchable. And as the salt was thrust into his hand, he poured a liberal amount onto her neck. 

She inhaled as he leaned forward and licked a long stripe, salty and girly and _Veronica_ , a large, loud gasp of waking. 

He slammed the tequila and looked around to see that someone had wedged a piece of lime in her mouth. Logan sank his teeth into it, squeezing the juice hard and, for a moment, feeling the hot, warm slide of her lips over his. 

His nostrils flared and his eyes watered and he doubted very much it was the tequila. 

“Okay!” He sank back onto his heels and gasped air down his throat. “Who’s next?”

Cheers sounded around him and catcalls hooted in the air and as he managed to maneuver himself back onto his feet, he watched the guys loom over her, liberally poured salt over her neck and arms and chest and hollered his approval while trying not to hear the little whimper in the middle of all of it. 

And damn if Duncan wouldn’t finally hear from people other than him what a fucking whore she was. 

***

Word spread sooner than he thought. 

He’d licked her neck and her cheek and squelched lime juice from her lips maybe two or three times, amid the crowd of hooting boys, before Duncan showed up. And Duncan was mad. Duncan, with his wounded little boy aura, that haunted look in his eye whenever he looked at Veronica, who acted as if she’d been taken from him and not dropped like yesterday’s Kleenex. 

“What the hell are you doing?” Breaking out of his coma, Duncan, who hadn’t bothered to talk to her in over two months. “She can barely sit up, you freak!”

Logan watched Duncan push the guys off her, watched him carefully pick her up, pull her to standing, and he watched the doll like limpness of Veronica, the small sound of nausea she made as her fingers weakly clutched Duncan’s arms. 

No fucking way was he going to let her worm her way back in. Not now. 

“Wait, dude, you can’t be the cavalry and the martyr, man. Pick a side.” 

But all he got from Duncan was a pissed off look, a predatory warning look that he might have expected months before. 

“Leave her alone.”

He couldn’t explain the loss he felt as he watched them stumble away. The building crowd began to lessen and the noise drifted away and he was left standing there. Duncan would never learn, he would never learn his lesson if he kept looking at her like she was a saint. 

Logan flipped the lid of the GHB and stirred it into a drink. 

“Hey, I’m sorry, dude. You know, man, you’re… I mean, you’re totally right. It’s no way to have fun.” 

Duncan took it warily. 

But he took it. 

And Logan nodded his goodbyes as he left them to it. 

***

“So, you’re, like… Logan, right?”

He blinked at the girl stepping into his personal zone and tried to remember her name. Couldn’t do it. Didn’t particularly want to. She was small and compact, pudgy around the edges, her face soft in all the wrong places, her features were slightly drooped with alcohol. 

“Yeah.” He mumbled, trying to rid his mind of another face. “That’s… that’s me.”

Veronica fucking Mars would not leave him alone, not even after he’d left her to Duncan. He was standing there holding this girl at bay, who was mere seconds from taking off her panties and throwing them at him in front of everyone, and all he could think about was shoving his face back into Veronica’s salted neck. 

He licked at his teeth, trying to dislodge the imagined taste. 

“It’s getting pretty loud in here.” Her voice rose a little louder, a little more pointed as she inched closer, pushed her rather average sized chest into his arm. “Don’t you think?”

“Huh…? Oh, yeah…”

“Hell yeah!” Luke’s voice carried out over the hallway from a larger room. “Girl on girl! She’s fucking wasted! You gotta come!”

He looked across to a crowd of guys and imagined he saw a flash of white and that was enough. He was struck by the sudden need to get away, to run, to just forget anything and everything to do with that shrew. He was struck by the sudden, drunken, teenage boy’s need to thrust into something warm, wet and willing. 

“Loud.” He agreed with a nod, grabbing her elbow. “Let’s get out here.”

***

Logan’s head pounded. 

It pounded and it throbbed and it hurt. His tongue felt plastered to his mouth, cemented down by layers of gunk and saliva. His stomach revolted at the slightest movement. Sunlight pierced his vision, slicing through his eyes like a red-hot blade. He should have been at home, ensconced under the covers, hiding from the world. 

And yet, there he found himself, driving towards the beach. 

Hiding from his own house. 

Surfing was good for a hangover. He’d either sober up or die in the waves. Either option sounded as good as the other. It was a fifty-fifty split. Perhaps a nice brain-bludgeoning fall on the rocks would cleanse the feeling of grime that clung to him. 

He could still feel that girl on his skin, all over him, her imprint sticking and cloying and accusing. She’d been the first girl since… since… in a long time. And she hadn’t been who she was supposed to be and it hadn’t stopped him imagining, in the midst of their frantic, drunken scrambling, a plumper, ampler body and a deeper laugh and a wicked gleam in her eyes. 

It made him sick. 

A flash of white made him slam on the brakes. He thought he’d imagined it at first, thought his brain was punishing him even more. But he hadn’t. That form there, walking along the side of the road, small and slow and awkward. 

It was Veronica Mars. 

He rolled the X-terra to a slow crawl next to her; let his eyes linger over the soiled dress and dirty bare soles of her feet. 

“Hey Ronnie.” She didn’t react, didn’t even look up. “Playing Rode Hard, are we?”

Slowly, agonizingly, she walked forward, dragging one foot in front of the other with her heels dangling idly by her thigh. 

“What’s the matter? Too tired to answer me? Get a bit of a workout last night?”

She stopped. 

She looked up. 

“I… I…”

Her eyes were raw and her face was streaked, eyeliner coursed down her cheek. 

“Speak up.” He egged her on. “I can’t hear you under all this shame.”

Her entire expression crumbled. 

And she cried. 

Veronica Mars sobbed in front of him. 

“You… you… you win.” It broke out of her in messy gulps, her entire body limp and useless as she stood there. “I can’t… do… you win… please… just… leave me…”

And then she continued to walk. 

***

Victory had never felt so good. 

He walked into school that Monday morning with a renewed purpose. It had taken months and a lot of effort, but his hard work had finally paid off. They weren’t rumors anymore, fact was fact and every single person that had been at Shelley’s knew what a slut Veronica Mars was. 

Duncan had no reason to act like he believed any different. 

He was finally on top of his world, back in control. 

But, with a flash of butch boots, dark indie clothes and close cropped blonde hair out of the corner of his eye, Logan Echolls had no idea of the maelstrom that awaited him. 

***


End file.
